Barely Human
by FireflyBullets
Summary: You'd think raising someone from the dead would earn you their trust, but that's not the case for Aster and Mitchell. He thinks there's things she's not telling him, but she thinks he isn't ready to know yet. She knows that alliances with lies don't last long, but there's one last thing she needs him for, and she's not ready to give up. UK'verse, post-S3, no pairings... yet...
1. Haze

**Author's Note: **_I only just (as in last week) got into Being Human and so my knowledge of this particular 'verse isn't as thorough as it usually would be, but I had two ideas for a story - this one and a second one, which will be getting posted soon...ish. I hope. Anyway, I've seen up to the end of S3 and I saw the first episode of S4 but absolutely hated it because I mean suddenly the vampires are the bad guys (yes they've always been the bad guys but before they were like your fourth grade PE teacher who Daddy Mitchell could get the shits with and argue with and now they're basically Satan so you tell me who's worse. No wait, don't.) ANYWAY I decided I didn't like S4 (yes partially to do with Mitchell not being there but also because George isn't there as well and Nina's gone and *flips table* I DON'T LIKE THAT) so I'm basically going to pretend that it ended with S3 and be done with that. Too many good series do the whole "okay yeah so first season the danger is fairly close by and gets defeated-ish and then second season the danger comes from within sort of and someone goes darkside and someone else rips out their humanity/essence/soul/etc trying to save the other and then season 3 can be about facing the conflict/confrontation created by what this guy did in the previous season plus the potential for long-term romance and then someone dies and OKAY SEASON FOUR WE'RE THROWING EVERYTHING OUT THE WINDOW LET'S JUST TURN IT INTO AN ETERNAL BATTLE OF GOOD VS EVIL AND TOTALLY FORGET WHAT THE ORIGINAL IDEA WAS ABOUT" and I'm sick of it and I'm rambling._

_This is an idea. The storyline is my idea. Most of the characters are my ideas, with the exception of one guy who is based off a friend of a friend. Mitchell, George, Annie, Nina, Herrick, and any other recognised names are creations of the guy who created Being Human and whose name I never actually read because I was too emotionally invested in the fictional events portrayed on the series. Every idea to their own creator._

**_Yes, I ramble. Don't judge me. Enjoy, if you can._**

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><p>'It's really remarkable, when you think about it. And when I say think about it, I really mean <em>think<em> about it.'

The voice… it was female, had a trace of arrogance… and was that an accent?

'Like, everyone thinks that once you kill something, it'll _stay_ dead. But oh, no. Death is _never_ as final as mortals believe,'

Yes, definitely an accent. Not English or Welsh, or Scottish. Not even Irish, though an Irish voice would have been welcome.

'They have such _skewed_ concepts of the world, don't you think? Life and death, good and bad, light and dark, sickness and health, better or worse – oh god, I'm starting to sound like a frigging priest marrying people.'

Burning, insatiable hunger. Something… there was something wrong with this whole thing…

'And there's another fucked-up mortal concept for you – marriage. Love. I mean, love exists, but it's not always essential to an eternal partnership.'

Did she _ever_ shut up?

'Like this little union of ours,'

A pressure on his lower half, a warm – no, _hot_ body on top of his, straddling his hips.

'Mitchell? You can open your eyes now, buddy.'

He was coughing, gagging, gasping. Breath had returned to him, the fire of hunger burning even more. His entire body was wracked with spasms as he choked on the sudden attack of oxygen. He was wrapped in fire, pain bursting at every nerve ending and inside him as well. White-hot flames burned behind his eyelids, and he could feel a scream being torn from his throat.

And then it was gone. A warm hand pressed to his forehead. Blankets, a bed, and moisture – sweat, he was sweating profusely. He could feel it. And still the hunger.

'Well, nobody said resurrection was painless.'


	2. Blood

They brought him blood.

The woman, with the accent, would be the one to pour it into his mouth most of the time. Every now and then, another female with a Cheshire accent would be there, and whenever she visited, the blood was warmer, more… fresh. Like it was being siphoned straight from her. But it was always dark when they came, and his vision still hadn't healed properly. He could make out the shadowy figures of the two women, but nothing more. No colour, no definition. Just blurred shapes silhouetted against the hallway light when the door opened and closed.

Though his vision didn't heal quickly, his other senses did. The one with the accent said it was something to do with having a near-death experience. Or, in some cases, a resurrection experience. She kept using that word, "resurrection". Like he was alive again. But that was impossible; Herrick had said that there was no way to come back from a staking. He was dead, and this was some sort of sick mind game Purgatory had dealt to him. Make him think he was alive again, alive and, dare he say it, safe. But no, that was impossible. George had staked him. He had felt it. He had felt it as his body, one hundred and seventeen years old, turned into the dust it should have become ninety-something years ago. He had seen, until the moment his eyes had disintegrated, George staring at him, Nina and Annie and Wyndam watching. It hadn't been painful. He had thought it would be painful. He had _hoped_ it would be painful. Anything, any sort of retribution. But no.

Even Purgatory wasn't the hell he had expected it to be. Lia had taken him to meet every single one of his victims. He had met Josie again. He had met Annie's friend, Gilbert, the weird hipster-goth guy. He had been surprised to find Daisy there, not so surprised to see her with Ivan. He had avoided confrontation with Herrick. Even McNair had met him once. And he had let his victims, all of them, play their twisted mind games. He had told them, turn it into a hell for him, so that they could have their vengeance. He deserved it.

And now this... this foreign girl, whose accent eluded him though he knew he should be able to identify it... she told him he was alive again. Never in those terms, exactly, but the words she said insinuated it. "Resurrection".

He wanted it to be another mind game. But they kept bringing him blood, for days, for weeks; he didn't know how often, but they kept bringing him blood. He figured out that when the Cheshire girl visited, he was drinking straight from her – siphoned, somehow, but still fresh. There was no mistaking that taste. She liked her rum, though; he could taste it in her blood. He also figured out that the slightly cooled blood the other girl brought him, in between the Cheshire girl's visits, was her blood again, left in some sort of device that kept it warm for longer, maybe even warmed up in a microwave.

He was still weak. His body still didn't respond the way he wanted it to. His hands could barely lift more than a few centimetres off the bed and his legs... well, he could move them side to side just a little after Cheshire's visits, but other than that he was essentially paralytic. He was helpless, but with every taste of blood they gave him, he could move his hands just that little bit higher, move his legs just that little bit further.

His senses were returning, too. Stronger than he'd ever remembered them. He could hear Accent and Cheshire's footsteps approaching the door, tell the difference between the two. Sometimes there was a third set, heavier, but he never heard a third voice. With each day – or week – he could hear further; now one of them was in the next room, now someone was on the stairs, now someone was using the shower...

And then his sense of smell returned, and with it, his sense of taste. He could _smell_ the blood coursing through the girls' veins; Accent's blood smelled like some sort of Greek sauce with an Arabian spice. Cheshire's scent was very close to human, but there was something... something not quite right. Her blood was filling, though, and delicious, a welcome treat after so _long_ without it. The third one, who visited only occasionally and said nothing, his – or her – blood smelled like spices and sharp herbs and burning things. Not _burnt_ things, but things that were still alight; he would even go so far as to say that they smelled like fire itself. And old; impossibly old.

He opened his eyes as he heard her footsteps outside the door, heard the doorknob turn. It would be the same as the last hundred times: he would protest as she sat him up, supporting him. He would purse his lips and shake his head as she held the bottle to his lips. He would hold his breath so he couldn't smell it, so he wouldn't be tempted to drink it. And if she was in a bad mood, she'd hit him in the stomach and he'd gasp, inhaling the aroma, and be taken over by the hunger. Or if she was in a better mood, she would wait, patient, until he finally gave up and let the hunger take over. He might snap at her, and she would dart away, maybe laughing, and let him fall back onto the bed. Then, she'd pull the covers over his shoulders and leave. He would hear murmurs somewhere else in the house as she reported back to someone else. And then they'd go downstairs, and there'd be silence again.

He wasn't sure if it was days, weeks, or months before his vision cleared, but they still came at night, when it was too dark to see. The accented one, she had a slightly broader build, a little too masculine for him to easily pick her as female; only her light, whisper soft footsteps and her gentle touch gave her away, unless she spoke. The Cheshire one, she was slim, almost skeletal he realised one night, when he managed to grab her arm before she left. She didn't feel healthy, and yet she was still letting him drink from her. Letting him drain her.

The third one had to be male. His footsteps were heavy, and he was built like some sort of rugby player, or footballer. He would visit with Cheshire, watch as Mitchell drank her blood. More than once, he saw her silhouette lean on his as they left, before the door closed.

It was three weeks after that before he could sit up on his own. It took another week for him to be able to move his legs properly. After six weeks, Cheshire half-supported him to the bathroom. A week after that, they removed the catheter someone had stolen from a hospital somewhere. It was another two weeks before he made it to the ensuite bathroom on his own.

But he pushed too hard. He tried to go beyond the room. He tried to go downstairs, fell, and the accented girl said it had set him back four weeks, at least.

He caught her hand as she tucked him back into bed after that. A hint of sunlight crept in between the cracks around the edge of the curtain, and he could see just enough of her to know she had dark hair, curls that cascaded down her back and rippled like water. Her face was in shadow, but he could see it was rounded, and her nose looked a little on the larger side.

'What's your name?' he asked her softly as she tried to pull away. He saw her jaw move, in the way most womens' jaws moved when they smirked.

'Aster,' she told him. She pulled her hand free, treading softly to the door and pulling it closed after her.

Aster with the accent. He made sure he remembered that.

It was another two months before he could walk downstairs with Aster's help. She was a fire type, she told him, which meant that there'd be a lot of sunlight in the areas of the house that she was usually in and if he wanted to be in those areas, he'd just have to get used to it.

Her eyes were green, he discovered, green and vibrant with energy. Her nose was slightly aqualine, but it suited her. Her hair frizzed out sometimes – most of the time, actually, and she had to plait it most of the time, which was a nightmare, apparently, because of the curls. She wore more male clothing than female, and it was usually slightly oversized, which made her look thinner than she actually was. Her shoulders were broader than most women Mitchell had known, and her t-shirts hung from them, hiding her figure. It was better that way, she told him. All the women she knew had been assaulted, or harassed, or abused in some way. She looked more like a boy, more able to put up a fight, and that made her less of a target. He wasn't sure if it was bullshit or brilliance.

It was obvious she was the lead character in this roleplay, this mind game. It was clear she was the one pressing the buttons, because Charlotte from Cheshire and Harry from Glasgow came and went, but she was always there. She didn't look familiar at all, and Mitchell wondered which one of his victims she had been. She had to have been a long time ago, before he really had any idea what he was doing. Before he began to remember them. She might have been someone he took in a back alley somewhere, unable to see her face, or maybe she had been one of his many Halloween victims – so many girls, he had killed while they still wore half of their costumes. The top half of the costumes, he reminded himself.

Maybe Harry was her brother, though he'd heard the older man flirting with her a couple of times, attempts at flirting which she always rebuffed with cryptic remarks and a significant look. Maybe Charlotte was her sister, though how the pretty blonde in skimpy clothing and the cross-dressing tomboy were related, he would probably never figure out. Maybe they were just friends, and she had invited them into her playworld as part of the game.

'You're not in Purgatory, Mitchell,' Aster told him, covering his hand with hers, looking into his eyes. 'We pulled you out of there.'

'By "we" she means "me",' Charlotte corrected. She was leaning on the kitchen counter, scooping a soggy mess of cornflakes and milk into her mouth. She waved her spoon at Aster, ignoring the flecks of milk that spattered onto the counter and the disapproving glare they elicited from Aster, 'Everyone thought it was impossible, but she found a way. She did it,'

'_Why_ would _anyone_ want to bring me back?' Mitchell argued, 'The things I've done, the things I _could_ do again...'

'That's exactly why,' Aster shoved a plate towards him, 'Eat up. I only have another three weeks off work and I need to make sure you're healthy and everything before I go back.'

'Why can't you just let me die?' Mitchell sighed. Aster tapped her fork on the edge of his plate. She had been nursing him back to health for the last five months. In the past month, he had been weaned off the blood – mostly – and back onto normal human food. Charlotte's own health had improved significantly since he'd stopped feeding four times a day from her. Aster, Charlotte and Harry had assured him that it was safe, that she could handle it. He hadn't believed them at first but she stood before him, in peak physical condition, her heart pounding strongly, her skin almost glowing, and he began to second guess himself.

In the time he'd spent in Purgatory, he hadn't seen any other inhabitants change the appearance of their physical health so easily. Even Lia hadn't been able to remove the wound from her neck, the wound he'd left when he'd killed her. Maybe it was just something she didn't _want_ to change, though. And nobody changed their clothes – they always appeared, wearing the clothes they died in. But Aster and Charlotte almost always wore something different. Harry rarely removed his heavy black trench coat, but the clothes beneath it changed.

'I've gotta go, babe,' Charlotte told them, scraping her bowl, 'Got an interview at that morgue. It's not the most ideal job, but,' she shrugged, 'Better than nothing, I guess. Dole ain't gonna do me for much longer, especially if I'm gonna be this one's blood bank,' she nodded her head at Mitchell, who groaned.

'You're not my "blood bank",' he told her, as she slunk around the counter. She perched herself on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck.

'I'll believe that when you can get your dick in me before your teeth,' she teased, before kissing him lightly on the nose and sliding off. Mitchell groaned as she waved to Aster, slamming the door shut after her.

'Can't she take a hint?' he asked Aster, and she smirked.

'Charlotte usually gets what she wants or pushes herself close to death trying,' she grinned, dumping her plate in the sink, 'Fuck her and be done with it. She'll lose interest then. Eat up,' she tapped her fork on the side of his plate, 'We're going for a walk. Hitting the shops before you eat me out of house and home.'

'You're the one who keeps forcing me to eat,'

'Yeah, so you don't go feeding on civilians,' Aster shuddered, 'That's the last thing I need, to be seen with what everyone thinks is a Sang.'

She seemed to do that often, use slang terms he had never heard of before. 'A what?'

'Sanguinarian,' Aster nodded her head at his plate, and he started on his eggs, 'After _Twilight_ and _True Blood_ and all those books and films romanticising vampirism came out, everyone decided drinking blood was cool. There's people who actually volunteer to be "victims",' she shuddered, 'Humans have such black hearts.'

He'd already learned that it was 2014. Aster had told him that when he had started walking again. He had been dead for close to four years. The house in Bristol had been bought from Owen, rented out to a group of students, apparently. Honolulu Heights on Barry Island was also under new management. Aster seemed to dodge questions about his friends, though. He hadn't seen them in Purgatory, so he assumed they were still alive somewhere, hopefully making a fresh start. Without him.

Aster changed the subject whenever he mentioned them. She changed the subject a lot, like she couldn't focus on one thing for more than five minutes. Unless it was food or him.

It occurred to Mitchell as he waited for her to lock the door that he hadn't actually been outside since waking up. The sun was almost blinding, but Aster had provided dark sunglasses for him. It felt like one of the hottest summers on record, but Aster had told him about the one a few years prior, where the weather had been so hot it had melted railway tracks.

'Where are we?' he asked, looking around the narrow street. Houses were piled together with a block of flats further down the road. It reminded him of Bristol, though some of the houses had cottage gardens out the front. He could hear cars on a motorway somewhere nearby, and the sounds of human life just beyond their neighbours' houses.

'Gables Close, Camberwell,'

'London?'

Aster saw his expression, 'Don't look so upset. It's not that bad, once you get used to the cold. And the damp. And the rain, _boy_ it rains a lot. I got too used to the Australian weather before I came back here,'

'What's Australia like?'

'Hot. Sunny. Everyone's so relaxed, like they've got so much to do but who really cares? Everyone keeps to their own but once you're friends, you're best mates and know everything about each other. It's great,' she smiled as she spoke about it, starting down the street. Mitchell could tell that she missed it, just in the way she spoke about it.

'Why don't you go back?'

'Gotta stay here and look after you,' she teased, 'But I might go back soon, just to visit. Like a pilgrimage or something. What sort of food do you want to get?'

She did it again, the subject-change thing. Mitchell pretended not to notice. 'Uh, I'll eat just about anything,'

'I'm the same,' she sighed, 'Okay, that makes planning meals easier.'

'You _plan_ your meals?'

'Force of habit,' she grinned, 'I used to work three different jobs so I got into the habit of planning healthy meals rather than getting take aways.'

'What _do_ you do for work?'

'Paediatrician,' she smiled, 'At St. Andrew's. We've got the best children's ward and treatment in the Greater London area.'

'You must be proud,' Mitchell remarked. A doctor – her bedside manner made sense now, as did the way she'd been able to tell how well he was healing. He had assumed she was a doctor of some sort or had nursed vampires before, knew their healing patterns and care needs.

He found it difficult to concentrate while Aster led him around the supermarket. He had been assigned the task of pushing the trolley while she dropped things in, ticking them off her mental checklist.

'It's been a while since I've hung out around your lot,' Aster remarked, 'You're okay with garlic, right?'

'Yeah, I use it all the time,' he admitted, and she nodded, before dropping a bottle of garlic sauce into the pile of things.

He looked around them, at the other people. Nobody spared a glance at the pair, all too involved in their own routines to bother paying attention to anything beyond their lists and their baskets and their children. A pretty young mother smiled apologetically at him, dragging her son out of his way; an older man stood back, perusing the items on the shelf, ignoring the fact that he was blocking the aisle. It was normal, it was... _human_. Aster even maintained a polite conversation with the shopkeeper as he scanned their food through and put it all into bags. He said something; Aster laughed. Mitchell knew he should be part of it, laughing as well, but it was like standing outside a restaurant, looking in through the glass windows.

Aster wasn't human; he knew the smell of human blood, and hers wasn't human. But she _looked_ human, and she was so good at pretending to _be_ human that if he couldn't smell from her blood, he wouldn't have known at all. She had achieved something that he had been striving for, for years. And she was only in her mid-twenties.

_How?_

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><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> _So according to traffic stats, there's a few of you that have read this so far. Please do me the huge favour of leaving some sort of review, even if it's just a "keep it up" or something. I'm kind of following wherever my mind leads at the moment and would love some opinions/reviews to keep this going :)_


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